Day 2 of the 2014 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Event #46: $50,000 The Poker Players Championship is in the books with Jason Mercier out in front in what still remains a close race at the top of the leaderboard.
The second day of this tournament was a significant one, as it was the first in which the field started to thin out. Registration closed at the beginning of Level 7; 17 more players signed up Monday to bring the total field to 102, well short of last year’s 132. The 102 runners produced a prize pool of $4,896,000 with the top 14 players making at least $100,000 (well, 12th through 14th make just shy of that, but I rounded up). The winner will cash in for $1,517,767. Of those 102, just 55 remain after Day 2, significant change from Day 1, when just five out of the original 85 players bowed out.
The chip leader, Jason Mercier, hasn’t made any big headlines lately, but the former number one player in the Global Poker Index is still going strong on the live tournament circuit (even if he is down to seventh in the GPI). He has cashed three times at the 2014 WSOP so far, including third and ninth place finishes. He has two six-digit cashes this year, first at the Aussie Millions when he finished third in the $25,000 Challenge for over $230,000 and then at the WPT Alpha8 in Johannesburg, where he again placed third and won exactly $200,000. Mercier has earned two WSOP bracelets and has won over $10.6 million in his live tournament career.
Mercier is the only player above the 800,000 chip mark with 802,600 and after him, there are just three players with over 700,000: Jonathan Duhamel (783,000), Shaun Deeb (724,400), and David Steicke (711,100). The chip leader going into Day 2, Matt Glantz, is still doing well, sitting in seventh place with 522,800, and is trying to make his third final table in this event after finishing fourth in 2008 and fifth in 2011.
Just one former winner of the Poker Players Championship remains, David Bach, but he is in deep trouble with only 17,400 chips left in his stack. All past champions participated except for Freddy Deeb and, unfortunately, Chip Reese, who passed away in late 2007, the year after he won the inaugural $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event (the tournament was later changed to an eight-game format and renamed the Poker Players Championship). After his death, the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy was introduced, awarded to the winner of the tournament.
The tournament will resume at 2:00pm Pacific on Tuesday as the star-studded field continues to narrow and make its way towards the final table.
2014 World Series of Poker Event #46: $50,000 The Poker Players Championship – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1. Jason Mercier – 802,600
2. Jonathan Duhamel – 783,000
3. Shaun Deeb – 724,400
4. David Steicke – 711,100
5. Gary Benson – 534,700
6. Scott Seiver – 529,700
7. Matt Glantz – 522,800
8. David Oppenheim – 425,000
9. Roland Israelashvili – 404,700
10. Eli Elezra – 397,300
* Tournament information courtesy WSOP.com
